August Report Cards

Wow there’s only one month left of baseball for all 30 MLB clubs. We’re past waivers and on to September call-ups. Teams start to prepare for October and 2012. As for the locals at this juncture, well two out of three ain’t bad as playoff contention is concerned. For playoff positioning everything remains the same except for the Arizona Diamondbacks swapping in front of the San Francisco Giants.

Your division leaders in baseball at the end of August are as follows: AL (Boston, Detroit, Texas, WC: New York). NL (Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Arizona, WC: Atlanta). Philadelphia has the best record in baseball at 86-46. Boston maintains the best record in the AL at 83-52.

Your MLB leaders after August: Adrian Gonzalez of the Boston Red Sox leads MLB with a .341 average. Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays leads MLB in home runs with 39. Curtis Granderson of the New York Yankees leads MLB in RBI with 107. Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers leads MLB with 20 wins. Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves leads MLB in saves with 41. Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers leads MLB in strikeouts with 218. Johnny Cueto of the Cincinnati Reds leads MLB in ERA at 2.05.

Now for the locals:

New York Yankees: Record 81-53, second place AL East, second best record in the AL. Home: 41-26. Road: 40-27. New York finishes 17-11 in the month of August. First in runs scored (732), first in home runs (188), second in OBP (.348), second in SLG (.454), fifth in AVG (.268). Team ERA is third at 3.69.

Aside from the last week and his knee injury, Jeter was white hot in August, batting over .387 for the month. Jeter’s 41 hits paced the club for August. Also on the list is Cano. In August, Cano showed why he was an MVP candidate in 2010. Cano led the club in extra base hits for the month, while hitting a robust .345. Granderson is cementing his case for AL MVP. In August, Granderson along with Cano were atop the Yanks leaders in RBI with 29. Granderson paced the club in runs scored was second in extra base hits and led the club in home runs with ten. Granderson was even up there in walks, only one behind Nick Swisher for tops on the club. In addition, off the bench, Andruw Jones hit a robust .344 with eleven hits and four home runs in 15 contests.

I know, small sample size for A-Rod but the guy just can’t stay on the field. One home run as your lone extra base hit in 17 at-bats doesn’t get it done. Speaking of not getting it done power wise, the combo of Chavez and Nunez. I do like the improvement in Nunez’s defense, but if you’re looking for pop, don’t look for it to come from the Yanks left side of the infield. Despite leading the club and the league in steals and playing stellar defense, not a great month at the dish for Gardner. Gardner’s .303 OBP for August is a little alarming.

Rookie or not, if you go 5-0 in August, you make the list. Ivan Nova makes this list. Nova had more wins than Burnett, Colon and Garcia combined and only one less victory than Sabathia and Hughes combined. Logan has a small sample size, but when you’re a situational guy it counts a little more. Eleven K’s, one walk and one run allowed over ten games, Logan makes the list. David Robertson’s name continues to come up here and rightfully so. Robertson pitched to a 0.82 ERA with 13 K’s in eleven innings. The way Robertson pitches out of jams impresses me all the more and those stats back it up. Additionally, granted he was on the disabled list most of the month, but Garcia made the most of it when he did pitch in August, sporting a 1.64 ERA in two starts.

Three Down Pitchers: A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon, Mariano Rivera.

Awful A.J. Another win-less August for Burnett with an almost 12.00 ERA, next. Colon looked like he was running low on gas but was pretty sharp his last outing. However, Colon didn’t win at all in August either. I could have gone with another starter here, but Mo did have a few rocky outings early in the month. I’ll still take Rivera every time out but a 3.38 ERA for a closer in the month of August is a little on the high side.

New York Mets: Record 65-69, third place NL East, eighth in overall record in the NL. Home: 29-36. Road: 36-33. New York finishes 10-16 in the month of August. Seventh in runs scored (592), tied for 12th in home runs (90), second in OBP (.335), eighth in SLG (.395), second in AVG (.265). Team ERA is 13th at 4.18.

I know it’s a small sample size, but Evans did hit .366 in August and had some clutch hits along the way. Evans’ .585 slugging percentage paced the club all month. Duda has been a revelation for the Mets. In August, Duda clubbed five homers and knocked in 20 to lead the club. Additionally, Duda hit a solid .319 for the month. Pagan led the club in hits (34), runs (15) and steals (8) and hence makes the list. Thole and his .300 average picked up some key hits for the Mets and you’d certainly take that from your catcher.

Three Down Hitters: Jason Bay, Justin Turner, Scott Hairston.

Bay hit .221 with just seven extra base hits for the month, awful. Meanwhile, Turner only had eight extra base hits and hit just .198. I know that Hairston isn’t a regular but in 16 games he hit only .147. Yikes.

Three Up Pitchers: Manny Acosta, R.A. Dickey, Chris Capuano.

Nobody wants to steak a claim to the Mets closer role. Nobody except maybe Manny Acosta. In 14 games and 13 2/3 innings, Acosta has a 1.32 ERA with 16 K’s. Wins can be tough to come by for knuckle ball pitchers, just ask Tim Wakefield. While Dickey only won one game in August, his 2.70 ERA bested all Mets starters. If ever there was one start to put a pitcher over the top on this list, it was Capuano’s complete game 13 strike out, two-hit shutout of the Atlanta Braves which got him here. Batters hit only .243 against Capuano and he led the club in K’s with 38.

Three Down Pitchers: Jason Isringhausen, Jon Niese, Mike Pelfrey.

Izzy made hitters dizzy in July, but got thrown off the tilt-a-whirl in August. Izzy did hit the 300 save milestone, but beyond that he had a frightening 11.25 ERA. Niese looked to be rounding into a stable cog in the rotation but seemed to wear down a bit in August with a 7.15 ERA. Finally Pelfrey has just been all over the place of late. The Mets had him slated as the de facto number one, but would’ve taken number three starter numbers. An ERA of 5.08, coupled with 15 walks and batters hitting .319 against him, just doesn’t cut it.

Boston Red Sox: Record 83-52, first place AL East, best record in the AL. Home: 41-26 Road: 42-26. Boston finishes 17-12 in the month of August. Second in runs scored (729), second in home runs (170), first in OBP (.350), first in SLG (.460), first in AVG (.280). Team ERA is sixth at 3.87.

There may be no need for the BoSox to go chasing after Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder in the off-season. That’s because Big Papi absolutely shredded up AL pitching in August. Ortiz batting .411, had an OBP of .494, slugged .836 and had an OPS of 1.330. Scary good numbers for a guy playing on one leg of late. Ortiz has also slammed a club leading eight homers on the month. Adrian Gonzalez saw the average dip a little bit but he did show some more pop. Gonzalez was among club leaders in runs, hits and OPS. Simply put, A-Gone gets on base. Meanwhile, Ellsbury continues to provide major run production for the Red Sox. Ellsbury hit seven bombs, drove in 22 and exactly half of his hits went for extra bases in August.

Three Down Hitters: Josh Reddick, Kevin Youkilis, Marco Scutaro.

Apparently no one wants to wrestle away the right-field spot on Boston. Reddick hit only .208 with just two homers, not enough pop for a corner outfielder. Granted Youkilis is hurt and only played 12 games, but somebody had to make the list. So Youkilis and his .209 average go here. Finally I go with Scutaro. Nobody is expecting Scutaro to be Rico Petrocelli, but zero home runs for the month? Seriously?

Three Up Pitchers: Jonathan Papelbon, Jon Lester, Alfredo Aceves.

Yes overshadowed all year by Daniel Bard, but Jonathan Papelbon is no slouch, especially of late. For Papelbon, eleven games, eleven innings, 12 K’s, two hits, no runs, no walks, a perfect 5-for-5 in saves and a record of 2-0. Lester has really rounded into form of late. In August, Lester posted a 2.78 ERA and batters hit only .193 against him for the month. As for Aceves, we’re really selling this guy short by solely referring to him as a wins vulture. Aceves across 12 games and 15 2/3 innings had an ERA of 1.15, 17 K’s and batters hit just .167 against him.

Three Down Pitchers: Matt Albers, Tim Wakefield, John Lackey.

Albers, the former Tri-City ValleyCat, was a nice story for about four months but has slipped a bit in the “Tito circle of trust.” For Albers, an ERA of 12.34 with hitters batting .346 against, will get him on this list. One has to figure Tim Wakefield will record win number 200 sometime, but with Andrew Miller emerging and Erik Bedard in the mix, one has to wonder when that sometime will come. Finally, Lackey has seemingly been here all year. If the Boston offense didn’t score so much for Lackey, his numbers would look much worse, if that’s possible.